BIO

For over 50 years, Roger Clay Palmer has been producing poetry, paintings, installations and, primarily, a large body of drawings. Ruthless black humor blends with gentle compassion in a world where animals and objects often mimic and reflect us. Growing up on a ranch in Florida listening to family members tell stories, his work reflects his love of Southern oral tradition. Strongly affected by his experiences in the army before being discharged as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, he often focuses on the dark side of current events. Six weeks in Japan in 1985 deeply influenced his work; as with Japanese haiga and Zenga, words are an indispensable component of his brush, pigment and ink drawings. 

His installations of drawings and artifacts have been shown in such venues as Diverseworks in Houston (solo and group shows); NEXUS in Atlanta; Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, NC; Polk Museum of Art, Lakeland, FL.; Jacksonville Museum of Art, FL; Montana State Gallery; Tampa Museum of Art; and Ringling (FL) Museum of Art, which purchased an installation for their permanent collection. He has received a regional NEA Grant, two Florida Individual Artists grants, as well as grants to do installations at Miami Waves Film Festival; Nexus; and The Artists' Alliance in Tampa, FL. He participated in a NEA funded collaborative performance work,"Smarter than Dogs", and a collaborative project with PWA’s which traveled to Miami and Orlando.  He has self-published 3 books, one of which (“The Inheritance and Other Stories") is archived at Franklin Furnace, NYC, another at Virginia Commonwealth University. Another was displayed at Houston Museum of Contemporary Art. Poetry and/or images were published in Sonoma Review (U. of Arizona); the Journal of the NEA; and Tabloid Magazine. He was included in the 2012 book “100 Southern Artists”.  

Since 2008, solo shows include: “In Dog Light” at USF Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa (with a catalog essay by curator David Norr); Marcia Wood Gallery in Atlanta; "Feral Brush" and “Taking On the Right Wing” at Tempus Projects in Tampa. He had 4 person shows at Mindy Solomon Gallery in St. Petersburg and Blue Spiral in Asheville, NC. Recent group shows include:"At Sea", Long Island City, NY; “Dark Poets”, Maryland Institute College of Art’s Decker Gallery; “Freaks“ Brooklyn‘s Privateer Gallery; and Atlantic Center for the Arts, New Smyrna Beach FL.

He divides his time between Tampa, FL, Jackson Heights NY, and a pole house he hand built in Ozello,FL.